33 comments:

This answers the question of why there was no press conference with the fertility doc that I saw. After all, I would think when fertility docs have such a big win for their stats (8/8) they would welcome some publicity. Which clinic did she use? Who was her doc?

According to some reports, the woman has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in welfare from the state, and probably the feds, too. Seems that if she wants to have babies on her own, she should do just that.

The case appears to be a sign that America has gone into areas in the name of welfare and "mothers rights" and expectations on granparents it just can't afford to let go on.

1. Worst part is the grandmother saying that the boyfriend wanted to marry her back when there was a "controllable" amount of kids. But she kept having them because she was not constrained in any way by traditional societal forces, not even by marriage or what the male parent wanted....and even saw marriage as bad because it would mean someone else involved in children that "were all hers" by her Rights. Had the Octuplets over his objections...Hard to see her ever married and expecting forces outside "society" and her parents to pay for her lifestyle and 14 children (so far).Or putting responsibility on the donor.

2. Her indulgent parents have wrecked their lives, lowered their own quality of life, over just the 6 she had they cannot raise in a small 3-bedroom place. The grandmothers life is consumed with just handling her six. She declared bankruptcy and lost another home after being drained supporting her single Mom daughter and 6 previous "miracles".

3. The beaming docs and administrators at Kaiser-Permanente, no doubt getting ready for another rate hike not just for Suleman's choices but sticking others with the cost of 100,000 more indigent and illegal alien single moms, and free care for other adult indigents and illegals with the free care, free emergency room sevices, free ambulance rides, and free care prisoners get "on the state's tab".

Doctors used to impose their own opinions on women all of the time. Want to get a tubal? Better hope that your doctor is of the opinion that you're old enough and have enough children already or he won't do it.

In a situation like this a person has to ask herself... is it a woman's choice or not?

In a situation like this a person has to ask herself... is it a woman's choice or not?

Generally, I'm pro choice. What a woman does with her body (abortion, in vitro embryo implantation, rubber lips and silicone tits) is her business. I may not approve and think that her choices are stupid or immoral, but still....her choice.

HOWEVER, when I'm asked, as a tax payer, to foot the bill and pay for her choices through welfare and other entitlement programs, I think I have a right to have some say so in the matter.

Because she is on the public dole, I do have the right to decry her choices and even prevent her from making these choices.

I can understand how the grandmother feels, no doubt, but I'm having a hard time understanding how blabbing to the press like this is in any way helpful to the situation. (If she wanted to blab to social services, that might be a different matter.)

I'm starting to suspect that grandma is getting a little bit too much out of the attention and sympathy here.

I'd like to get something straight. It is possible to raise a family of fourteen children and do it well. I dated a guy from a family of 15 children; his house was neat as a pin and all the children did well. I also know a family of seven children who lived in a two-bedroom trailer house. Again, the house is tidy, the children all grew up to be good people. My mom had six kids and a neat home--in fact, most families where I grew up had over four children. I have two and my house is messy.

For the grandma to blame a messy house on the mom having too many children...that's just not honest.

That said, in this particular instance, I think the mom has some mental problems, I think the grandparents enable her, and the doctor who implanted six embryos in an unemployed single woman should be stripped of his medical license.

DBQ, I don't disagree, though if we're going to pay for anybody's kids, why not? As far as society is concerned, we're paying for each of the kids, no matter how many mothers, or how few mothers, are involved.

I was just pointing out how amazing it was that the doctors didn't say "no." How did this woman get admitted to an IVF program the first time? Why was she eligible at all? And would that make any difference if the doc just put in two embryos and flushed the rest?

In the end, though, no matter how foolish the mother's decisions seem, I can't really fault her for *wanting* the kids. And I can only fault her a little bit for taking advantage of programs that were offered to her. She didn't hold anyone at gun-point after all.

I read an interview with the mother where she said she was not on welfare. She was on disability, from a riot in the insane asylum where she apparently worked (not resided). One pays disability insurance so presumably one can collect on it without moral issues.

I don't have the outrage others seem to have. She had a career, she wanted a big family, and after her career was ended, what was left? And the "safety net" that the big state types like to talk about is designed to catch this sort of thing, after all, isn't it?

Some folks are talking like she should've been self-sufficient or something, but where is that valued in the system? Or maybe she should have found a husband, but who says a woman needs a husband? Maybe she shouldn't have put herself in a situation where she'd need millions of dollars of medical care for her children, but the state can take care of all that.

Oh, it's annoying because she gets free money just for existing and hyping up a natural process, but it makes up for some of those anal career moms who only had one kid - or none.

That's how our system is set up now. We outsource babies all the time if not to Nadya, then to a nanny. Let's not pretend that rich men didn't do it. What was Princess Diana if not a brood mare?

I'm torn. Under the old system it's not fair at all and it makes me angry. Under the new system, I'd put it up there with Nadya charging 3.8 million for her virginity. She's taking economic control of her inborn resources.

BTW, I'm from CA and the early local word was that she went to Mexico for the treatment. Don't know if that is valid.

Prairie said: "It is possible to raise a family of fourteen children and do it well."

I agree with some reservations. My mother was the oldest of nine children. She was born in 1929. The ages of the children were spread out from 18 to 1 years old...NOT all the children born at one time. In a large family everyone pitches in. In my mother's family,both parents worked, my mother worked as a teenager and so did all the younger kids who could get an afternoon job. There was no such thing as welfare and people were forced to actually work and be responsible for themselves. Charity in the form of Churches and other private organizations did exist.

In this case...no one is working and we the taxpayers are going to have to support this deranged woman and her poor children. There is no way you can give proper attention to a litter of children. They will be growing up deprived of the attention that each and every one of them deserves.

Some folks are talking like she should've been self-sufficient or something, but where is that valued in the system? Or maybe she should have found a husband, but who says a woman needs a husband? Maybe she shouldn't have put herself in a situation where she'd need millions of dollars of medical care for her children, but the state can take care of all that.

Hopefully Blake is being sarcastic. There have been people arrested for having less cats in their house than this woman has babies.

The woman is mentally ill and her children are going to suffer for it.

Jeez how did we possibly live before every whim and desire was funded by OTHER PEOPLE?

We relied on family or churches... and we didn't have the expectations of parenting that we have now, and we didn't have exaggerated material expectations. Plus, older relations often had to rely on the good-will of their children for elder-care so they had incentive to help out with kids. We didn't have birth control and when people got sick they died.

The best thing about individual or intimate charities (such as churches) is that freeloaders can be told to get lost.

I once had a pastor who told about someone who came to the church looking for a hand-out. He told the person, sure, come to church Sunday and I'll give you a check. The reaction was, how dare he! As much as I disliked that particular pastor, that was one thing he was right about... there was no reason at all not to put whatever conditions on the church's charity that he (or the church) wanted to put there.

They mentioned the name of the fertility clinic and her doctor's name this morning on Bill Handel's show on KFI AM640. Handel is a lawyer that specializes in in-vitro fertilization and is acquainted with the doctor in question. You can listen to a podcast of Handel's show without registration on the KFI website.

Handel said that nobody implants 8 embryos at once and I think one of the news guys corrected Handel and said it was 6 implated embryos, but two split into twins or something like that.

Anyone who argues against smoking in bars (and I've never been a smoker) on the grounds of the possible future health costs "to society" had better be against this situation or they are gigantic hypocrites.

If we can prohibit other 'personal choice' issues based on the purported cost to society, surely having multiple children through IVF with the expectation of the rest of us paying the medical costs is, if anything, much worse than a smoker lighting up in a bar.

I have to draw the line at telling people they can't do something because they are on welfare.

This discussion starts getting into health care costs and resource availability. For years there have been discussions hinting at controlling health care costs and limiting health care services for older members of society.

With the nomination of Cass Sunstein to Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs The LA Times wrote:

He has embraced a controversial "senior death discount" that calculates the lives of younger people as having a greater value than those of the elderly.